prof.dr. K. Pfeffer (Karin)

I am holding the chair Infrastructuring Urban Futures in the Research theme PLUS – People, Land and Urban Systems. 

The chair analyses past and present developments of urban processes, and develops scientific methods, approaches and tools to sketch, simulate and analyse urban futures in a collaborative planning environment. The term infrastructuring emphasizes the important relationship between urban development, infrastructures and services (e.g. transport, energy, water, telecommunication, etc.), and it expresses the need to rethink and innovate the way cities are managed and developed. The pressure on urban planners to re-invent their practices raises the question of how research can engage with, and participate in, the development of new urban planning practices which address issues of urban sustainability and the tension between efficiency and inequality. Therefore, the chair investigates how urban governance actors (state, corporates, citizens, academia) develop, organize and practice access to urban infrastructure (transport, energy, water, sewage, etc) and how Geo-T can enhance the planning of and access to urban infrastructures balancing sectorial and social priorities. It combines quantitative, spatial (GIS and Remote Sensing techniques) and qualitative methods and employs a multi-stakeholder perspective to generate information and knowledge from different data sources in urban areas and investigate its use in urban governance and planning processes. 

My specific research topics are:

• Urban infrastructures and infrastructuring
• Urban planning support
• Urban poverty and spatial inequalities
• Mapping and analyzing urban deprivations / slum areas
• Urbanisation patterns and processes
• Sensorial environment of urban public spaces
• Smart urbanism and urban lifestyles
• Urban remote sensing
• Geo-technologies and digital technologies
• Geographic information analysis and spatial knowledge
• Participatory mapping / qualitative GIS

Publications

Organisations

• Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-Information Management (PGM)